


three compliments

by vos



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: : ), BAMF Charles, Character Study, M/M, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 15:34:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18853951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vos/pseuds/vos
Summary: It's easy to forget that your chess partner is the most dangerous person on the planet.Or: Compiled reasons why to acknowledge it.





	three compliments

01.

It goes like this: 

Charles is sitting on a bench, knuckles white over his skull, not helping with how he hears everything that bounces and tumbles and ricochets off of everyone else's mind. When he first hears them, they're like repeating mantras, like a verse from a song that he's never heard before but can't seem to get out of his head. His mother just tuts into the other room, pretending that the type of curtain that dresses the ballroom is somehow more important than the way her own son obsessively pours himself into his books, thinking over and over again that  _I have more important things to attend to._  Weirdly enough, the voice doesn't sound like his own. 

By the time he's older, his pouring himself over the books has proved useful, like when he learns of topics like  _virtue_  and  _morality_  before he intentionally reads the maid's mind. Within a month, he's able to project to her; even if it feels like he may get lost and the tether that keeps him connected to his own mind feels far too thin. 

Raven is spirited into his life through major identity theft—something he wouldn't have any other way. It's the first time he's used his powers in an aggressive way, and it isn't the last. As the years go on, Raven rebels enough for them both; something Charles would later refer to as a blessing, because it's always too dangerous for him to do anything of the sort. Even at his age and meager skill, manipulating the man behind the counter to give him an extra sweet would prove catastrophic in the long run. In many ways, Raven was his saving grace, because being the role model he was, there was no room for reckless behavior.

At age seventeen, he decides he's going to get a PhD in genetics, because he can. 

It goes like this:

Charles, tipping back an entire beer bong and still being sharp-minded enough to perform an entire lecture on advanced chromosomes for dummies. At the parties, he's labeled a genius for his work, a machine by the same, but it doesn't matter, because it always ends with him dropping his pants and fucking another aspiring waitress. Charles manages not to become a time bomb, because it's true; he is a genius, and he is a machine, respectfully. He writes three dissertations and has lots of fun, but when the day ends, it ends with Raven's blue skin and his own conscience gently reminding him why it's so important to stay secretive. 

He doesn't date.

As an alternative, Charles adopts the term  _human bicycle_  and doesn't let anything show upon his face when he hears it in other's minds. 

It's still lonely, in his own head, stuck between a careful secrecy and Raven's brick wall of respectful privacy. But if there's one thing that he can live by, it's his own set of ethics. It keeps him from wrenching someone's thoughts from their head for providing crude comments directed at his sister, and it'd be so easy, like ripping the tongue out of someone's mouth. The matter of the fact is that it'd be  _too_  easy to get away with it.

Okay, so maybe he might be a time bomb.

But it's not like that. It isn't rage that goes along with knowing that he can stop neurons from firing electrical impulses toward someone's heart. It's a careful, analytical practice that makes the time bomb into a grenade that he has to jump on before it goes off (which he does, every time, without fail). And ever since manifestation, it's gotten easier, too. 

It doesn't go like this: 

As soon as he's hooked into Cerebro, he wipes out the human race, because he  _can_.

 

02.

Erik's breath is literally taken when he meets the telepath. So what it's from his lungs constricting to the point of collapse, from hairline fractures in his hands for pulling too hard on a submarine— _so what._  Regardless of whatever it says on the medical bill, he likes to think that it was because he was so dumbstruck by Charles Xavier.

Erik's a smart man, which grants him to the ability to know that his life will successfully orbit around the professor for a while, and it does. And because there's a whole list of ways how Charles can incapacitate him with the lift of two fingers, it's stupidly unreasonable for his begrudging admiration and the gravitational pull when the other's around. Because Erik, if nothing else, is a survivor, and gravitating towards what is the most dangerous being on the planet does not help. 

The warning bells aren't up, however. Erik can predict that if he centers around surviving, Charles centers around coexisting.

This professor, this mutant who is regularly able to delve into the minds of the World's Worst, turns out to be a happy, charismatic man that Erik decides he could follow. Even more, he decides that he can listen to him. 

It's to both their surprises, he supposes, that they become such fast friends. Erik learns to adopt the term  _my friend,_  and Charles learns that Erik looks startlingly good in a sparkly blue dress.

From admiration comes respect, but it's with great irritation that Erik watches Charles keep his silence when better men wouldn't have. He could manipulate world leaders and start a war with the power he has, but doesn't even consider the idea. With all of the chances that he has, it's easy to feel jealous, even. 

Things come to a head outside underneath a blood moon, with them both returning from a bar; from a failed recruiting. Erik feels the knives before he sees them, and they're efficiently plucked from the attacker's grasp, but then Charles' hand is on his arm which he's still trying to raise, fingers leveling the knives back at their wielders—

"Erik." And the thing that kills him is that he's just so goddamn  _polite_  about it. Like he's asking him to have a chat over chess rather than ending this man's life for trying to hurt them.

It's why once Charles has put them to sleep, Erik turns on him, demanding, "Why don't you ever do something  _more?_ " Because it's obvious that they aren't going to stop what they're doing, he must see that, he has to.

"Oh, my friend," He endears, "Why should I?" 

It's a loaded question and Erik hates it, he hates Charles when he's being righteous because it's like he's standing next to the sun, one that illuminates the too many lines across his face and silvers the scars across his knuckles. In a smooth movement, his hands are off the men on the floor and tucked in his pockets, his entire posture pointed towards Erik. He has his full attention. "Because they're going to do something like this  _again_."

"You think me soft."

Erik says nothing.

When Charles speaks again, his voice is controlled. Even casual. "...I could very well wipe their memories to the day they were born. I could have them in a mental institution for the rest of their lives, I could give them mental illnesses that haven't even been named yet, Erik. I could do that." Erik is surprised to feel not feel anger, but genuine curiosity washing off of the telepath. It's like some sort of shoreline, waves lapping at the edges of his mind. "Would you rather me do that?"

If any surprise etches across his face, the other doesn't seem to notice it. "Don't twist my words, Charles," Erik says. "You know what I mean. You shouldn't be so forgiving with them."

The other barks laughter. "I don't do it out of forgiveness," Comes this tone that's new and foreign, "I do it because redemption is a right that should be offered to everyone. I am not  _so forgiving_. If I wished to change the very way they are, I would do it myself." His eyes are dangerously, vividly blue; "If I wished to teach them a lesson, I'd do it. But this isn't from compassion. I'm not their mother, I don't owe them any guidance."

Erik's mouth goes dry. This is as close as Charles has ever gotten to a rebellious phase. 

After a pause, his pitch is lowered, as if it's an apology. "It's crucial to let them change on their own. And if they don't, if they go too far... remember that I do have limits just as rigid as yours, Erik."

 

03.

Sometimes, it even goes like this:

Charles whisking into the kitchen, holding a garishly bright apron, and kisses Erik directly on his surprised mouth. There's a series of  _when's_ after that:

     When he's downright swaddled by Charles in the morning, even though the other has managed to take every single pillow and shove it off of the bed. Erik finds Charles' cheek squished against his chest, like he's the only pillow in existence.

     When the turns in chess take ten seconds at best, because Charles is inside Erik's mind and vice versa, but he keeps enough to himself so he ends up thinking  _checkmate_  by the end of it. The other verbally scoffs at the smug feeling that he projects.

     When Charles is talking animatedly to his peers about genoblasti-something, ensnaring their attention, when the way his eyes light up and the smile he gives is winningly charming. They're soon reciprocating his enthusiasm, because how could they  _not_ , and Erik brings him some more of this spiked  _something_ , and everything feels right with Charles' arm around his waist.

Because that's the thing about him; with the power and opportunities that Charles has, with all of his telekinetic potential (the man who can hold Sebastian Shaw still, the man who can kill an army in half a second), Erik still appreciates his charismatic geneticist the most. Even if the powers do help—there's nothing more dangerous than a man who can get Erik Lehnsherr to fall in love with him. Nothing better, nothing he'd ever want more.

 

_You're too sweet._

_Don't get used to it,_  Erik replies, but he knows Charles already has.  


End file.
